Infra-As-Code - Next Steps

1. Hopefully the series of posts over the past few weeks have been beneficial to others.  I am hopeful that they have either confirmed your thoughts, confirmed your methodologies or maybe even opened your eyes to the idea of heading down the Infrastructure as Code journey. And with all of the content that has been covered you may be wondering to yourself how or what are the next steps to continue this journey. And this is exactly what we will cover in this post. Up until this post we have focused on the network being treated as code versus stagnant methodologies and processes that continue to be considered dark magic on how networks are treated. Which we have covered in the previous posts on how we can begin leveraging newer methodologies and processes as well as relearning our culture as an organization. And if you follow those as well as develop your own you can begin extending these same principals into other areas of infrastructure. This could include application and server deployments along with their respective lifecycle management. But maybe these specific areas have already been addressed and the network is the next phase of your journey. And if that is the case then you can continue to grow each specific area of infrastructure as a whole in order to get a complete overall strategy for each area. You should use this journey as a way to begin breaking down the silos between teams and come together as one in order to deliver services in a much more holistic manner. But if your focus is only network infrastructure then you should continue to implement and practice the steps outlined in this post as well as any additional practices that you adopt in each implementation phase going forward. Keeping all discussions and methodologies out in the open across teams will allow for the culture shift that can and should occur going forward. This will only strengthen the relationships that teams and organizations have in the future. And I realize that DevOPS (see…I finally said it J) is on many organizations mind but do not fall victim to the mentality that we HAVE a DevOPS team. DevOPS is not a team, it is not automation, it is not Infrastructure as Code but rather at the core is culture. With culture and the areas that we have touched on over this series will only enhance all services being delivered as an organization. But if the only thing that is achieved by your journey is a more stable, repeatable and consistent delivery method allowing you to reach the desired state then you will be in a much better place.

And with all of this I will end this post for now and the final post in the series is up next which will be an overview of what has been covered. Hope you have enjoyed this series and keep the comments coming.